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David Waines’s The
Odyssey of Ibn Battuta is a palatable monograph on the legendary Moroccan
Muslim traveler. Ibn Battuta’s travelogue, al-Rihla,
has long been used as a source of information on Eurasia and Africa in the
Middle Ages. Sex, culinary delights, miracles, and radical others are among the
many themes of Waines’s book. Like Ibn Battuta’s travelogue, The Odyssey explores the sacred and the
profane in equal measure.

In the opening chapter, Waines seeks to contextualize Ibn
Battuta and his famous travelogue, which is the only book attributed to Ibn
Battuta. Waines uses the English translation of al-Rihla by Gibb and Beckingham as his primary source of research
for The Odyssey. After Waines makes
the inevitable comparison between Ibn Battuta and Marco Polo, he attempts to
defend the very authenticity of Ibn Battuta’s travelogue. Waines concedes that portions
of al-Rihla are plagiarized and that
the chronology of Ibn Battuta’s travels laid out in the text is “impossible.”
Waines argues that even though Ibn Battuta copied portions of his travelogue
(most notably from Ibn Jubayr), he still adds a fourteenth century eyewitness
account on top of the accounts of previous authors.

As Waines periodically indicates throughout The Odyssey, Ibn Battuta’s al-Rihla generally conforms to the
historical realities of the Middle Ages. Therefore, the question that scholars
are grappling with is whether Ibn Battuta actually visited the places he
discusses in his book or if his account is the product of his own research. Ultimately,
Waines suggests that critics of Ibn Battuta, including Gibb, provide misleading
conclusions. Waines argues that plagiarism among medieval writers was
widespread, even if frustrating for the modern scholar. Although the plagiarism
question consumes most of the first chapter, it is not the main thrust of
Waines’s book. Waines is more interested in opening up the world of Ibn Battuta
to a contemporary Western audience.

The remainder of The
Odyssey is divided into four chapters. Chapter two dives into the travels
of Ibn Battuta. The reader makes a pilgrimage with Ibn Battuta to Mecca, sails
south to Yemen, travels to Anatolia, and heads east to India and China before
returning to Ibn Battuta’s homeland of Morocco. Along the way, Ibn Battuta
hears church bells ring for the first time, purchases two Greek slave girls, joins
a military expedition, and receives a large cash gift from a Turkish sultan.
Throughout this chapter and the remainder of the book, Waines is a good tour
guide, providing historical or cultural context when necessary.

The themes of chapter three are food and hospitality. In
fact, much of the discussion on hospitality focuses on food as well. Having
written extensively on medieval Islamic culture since the 1970s, Waines is in
his element when discussing food. In fact, Waines’s contribution to Ibn Battuta
studies may well be his elaboration on food culture. Throughout the chapter, he
gives detailed descriptions, even recipes of dishes that Ibn Battuta mentions. Further,
Waines points out Islamic food laws when applicable to the stories he relates.

In my view, chapters four and five are the highlights of The Odyssey. Chapter four fulfills the
promise indicated by the subtitle of the book. The reader is treated to
fantastic tales featuring great religious and political figures. Waines does
not disappoint in his retelling of Ibn Battuta’s experiences with fire dancing,
snake biting, fortune telling, levitation, and other miracles. As Waines points
out, Ibn Battuta’s travels can seem like “a medieval globetrotter’s guide to
the cemeteries of the Muslim world” (p. 135). Waines argues that Ibn Battuta’s
goal in visiting tombs of saints and other holy sites was to receive religious
blessings and witness miracles (p. 121).

The theme of the fifth and final chapter is the “other,” for
which Waines relies heavily on the work of Remke Kruk and Roxanne Euben. The first
half of the chapter discusses Ibn Battuta’s treatment of women. Waines
describes Ibn Battuta as “more of a serial monogamist than polygamist, except
for his…sojourn to the Maldive Islands” (p. 158). In what follows, Waines
describes a pattern in which Ibn Battuta would contract marriages during his
stay in a given place and divorce his wives once he decided to travel to his
next destination. Waines illustrates how Ibn Battuta reveled in the fact that
marriage in the Maldives “is really a sort of temporary marriage,” (p. 163).
However, as a judge on there, he tried to force women to wear Islamic dress,
but to no avail. Additionally, Ibn Battuta chastised the immoral behavior of
buying Greek slave girls for prostitution, but continuously purchased slave
girls throughout his travels when he could afford it. Waines also points out
that Ibn Battuta was scandalized by the fact that he came across matrilineal
societies in sub-Saharan Africa, where women and men had platonic relationships.

In the second half of the fourth chapter, Waines discusses
Ibn Battuta’s relationship with religious and racial ‘others.’ Waines illustrates
a number of encounters between Ibn Battuta and practitioners of Islamic legal
schools other than his own Maliki school. Waines includes an entire section on
Ibn Battuta’s interaction with Shi‘i Muslims. Following the practice of Ibn
Battuta, Waines uses the derogatory terms dissidents and Rafidis (lit.
rejectionists) to describe Shi‘is. In all, Waines suggests that although Ibn
Battuta detested the “extreme Rafidis,” he admired their piety and hospitality.

The
Odyssey is a must read for Ibn Battuta enthusiasts,
especially those who happen to be foodies and enjoy fantastical stories. The discerning
reader is left wondering, though, whether the tales presented by Waines are a
veritable portal to the medieval world or simply Ibn Battuta’s imagination of
it. Either way, Waines has written a fascinating study of one of history’s most
renowned world travelers.